cahya🌻🌓🏹

a shared song

“You weren’t even together.”

Marissa being legitimately heartbroken and everyone seeing her grieving and unless they happen to know both her and Ryland the FIRST thing they ask is almost always “Were the two of you an item?”

And when she says no then it becomes “did you want to be?” “did you see him as a brother instead?”

Marissa feeling hurt and frustrated because isn’t it enough that they were friends? Is twenty years of late night conversations, inside jokes, tears, laughter, Thursday dinners like clockwork—is that not enough to say she loved him, plain and simple? Is she not allowed to grieve this way, like a piece of her was torn out without anyone even telling her?

Look at my jellyfish sprites boy

Sundogs

Asperitas clouds

Russian Light Pillars

Nacreous Clouds

Morning glory clouds

St. Elmo's Fire

Not only do i like to make plans, but i's also something i kind of have to do to picture the place and make it plausible and accurate - escpecially if i want to make a comic.

That plan fixes the mistakes i made for the lounge one i did last year. I still believe the lounge looks like this somewhat, but i picture it wider now, the room was too small. Making those plans i had to remember that a usual exy team can fit up to 30ish people in it, so common rooms had to be large, each locker room should be able to fit ~15 people and so forth.

It’s… fine, overall. But he knows that sleep doesn’t come as easily to him as it does to the average person. It takes time for him to get his brain to turn off all the way, it takes a few tosses and turns to get comfortable. It can even be hard to stay asleep sometimes, the smallest of sounds or movements from a teammate in a hotel room can jostle him right awake at random hours of the night.

Unless he sleeps on Shane. Not even next to Shane. But on top of Shane.

The first time it happened was at the cottage. It was their first night together and Ilya had found himself curled up on Shane’s lap in front of the fire, Shane’s fingers soothingly scrunched in his hair, scratching at his scalp in just the best way. And Ilya was tired. Exhausted from the flight, from the anxiety of facing this large expanse of time he was to spend with the man he loved but had not expressed it, and opening up about his mother was the final blow, leaving him so emotionally drained that the flames licking in front of him just turned into an orange blur.

He wanted to stay there forever, with Shane’s thighs pillowing him, a hand rubbing up and down his body with another in his hair. So he closed his eyes. 

Ilya had no idea he had fallen asleep until he later felt rubbing at the space behind his ear on the edge of his jaw, Shane’s voice guiding him back to consciousness. “It’s late, Ilya,” Shane murmured. “Why don’t you start heading to bed while I put out the fire? I’ll be right behind you.”

Ilya made sure to stay awake until Shane clambered into the bed ten minutes later.

The next time was only days later. Shane was sitting across from him on the couch, their feet pressed together, his eyes shining, voice wobbling as he said “Don’t marry Svetlana." Ilya couldn’t stop himself from standing up, gathering the blanket that had been draped over him, and flopping into Shane’s side.

“I’m fine,” Shane had begun to protest as Ilya pulled the blanket over them both.

“I didn’t say you weren’t,” Ilya replied simply, squirming up against Shane until he could tuck his head on Shane’s shoulder, forehead pressed to his neck. “Maybe I’m just cold.”

Shane scoffed and looked back down at his phone, Ilya quickly scanning the screen. “Are you really reading hockey shit right now?” 

He felt Shane shrug against his head. “I know, I know. Call me boring, I accept it.”

Ilya grinned and snuggled closer. “Is fine. You’re good pillow either way.”

Shane rested his head on Ilya’s and began to scroll, and Ilya could do nothing but close his eyes, and let sleep take him in seconds. He was woken up again later, Shane gently whispering in his ear to coax him to bed.

…Only to wake him later in the middle of the night, promptly kicking Ilya’s ass with a detailed plan about how they could spend the rest of their lives together. Ilya passed out on Shane like a human sized weighted blanket, tears still wet on his face.

The sweetest time Ilya did it at the cottage was in front of Shane’s parents. The day after Shane came out to them, Yuna and David stopped by for dinner. Eventually the group sat by the fire, stars twinkling in the sky, and Ilya could feel himself crashing. Between the sex and the emotional conversations, the amount of sleep he was having was not enough, and he could feel it. Shane and his parents were chatting around him and Ilya lost focus, leaning over his knees and staring into the fire, trying to focus on the shapes of the flames to keep his eyes open.

He eventually felt a gentle pull at his shoulder. It was Shane guiding him to lean back against the back of the couch with him, tucking Ilya into his neck and shoulder once again. Ilya wanted to object, but found himself curling into Shane’s warmth, and closed his eyes. 

Shane didn’t wake him this time, instead the continued voices pulled him back to awareness. He kept his eyes closed and listened to the conversation, not wanting to lose the way Shane held him. Ilya began to realize that they were talking about him.

“-been really tired these past few days. It’s been a lot for both of us.”

“I can imagine,” Yuna replied softly. “He seems quite comfortable with you.”

“He’s been doing this a couple of times,” Shane’s grip on Ilya’s shoulder tightened in a squeeze. “Knocks right out on me.”

“Because he knows you’re safe.” Yuna said. Then, after a stretch of silence, “He seems like a really sweet boy.”

“Yeah,” Shane said after a beat. “He is.”

It took everything in Ilya not to smile.

And it became a regular occurrence after that. Shane would joke that Ilya was just using him as a cheat code, since being on top of him seemed to magically make Ilya pass out in seconds, but Yuna’s words stuck with him. The safety that Shane gave him was unlike anything he ever had, and he took advantage of that whenever he could. Over the following years, Ilya would always find himself flopping on top of Shane whenever possible. Shane would be reading his book in bed in his adorable glasses and Ilya would press into his neck, read a few words of his boring hockey book, and sleep. He would drape himself over Shane on the couch, press his face into Shane’s chest, and sleep. Once they’re on the Centaurs together, he would sleep on Shane during flights because planes made him more nervous after the emergency landing and would rather not be conscious. 

And as for Shane? Shane loved it. He loved every part of it. He loved the moment he could feel Ilya’s body slacken, he loved the soft snoring noises he would make. And he especially loved when he would wake Ilya up. He would blink up at Shane so softly and scrub at his eyes, smiling dreamily as Shane rubbed whatever part of his body that he had access to. And Ilya would always tilt his head up for a kiss, which Shane would of course oblige. And Ilya would make the cutest noise on the planet, only reserved for these moments, where Shane wakes him up to herd Ilya to wherever he needs to be next. It’s just the softest noise of contentment and peace, sometimes Shane would kiss him a second time just to hear it again. 

"There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one."

the concept of star-eating microbes causing a crisis and the solution being the introduction of space wolves to space yellowstone to control the space elk population. i love a good trophic cascade

dr ryland grace immediately pitching "turn the spaceship into a giant centrifuge to generate gravity" and then not balancing his actual centrifuge later on

the entire "life is reason" scene really

grace forgetting to open the mystery alien container in a fume hood AND immediately sticking his nose in it. if we did this in chemistry lab we were executed on the spot

academia drama being one of the cornerstones of grace's character

grace switching through every spectrum setting on the microscope to try to see into the astrophages and not being able to (relatable)

also: the astrophage dying and grace going "ohhh it died..." (very relatable)

grace having his not-scientist buddy Carl to give him frank solutions when he's overthinking. yes, often the solution is just to put the box in another box

copious duct tape usage

just sticking a filter into the path of the petrova line to collect astrophage goop

eva going "so it's alive" when grace tells them the astrophage are moving, and him being like "WELL ok that could be for a lot of reasons" in the tone of someone who doesn't even know where to start explaining why that's a hasty assumption

grace referring to the first new astrophage as his and carl's baby multiple times (HIGHLY relatable)

UPDATE! They found the original photo!